Speeches: Literary and Social, by Charles Dickens

SPEECH: LONDON, NOVEMBER 5, 1857.

[At the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen and Clerks Schools, which took place on Thursday evening, Nov.
5th, 1857, at the London Tavern, and was very numerously attended, Mr. Charles Dickens occupied the chair. On the
subject which had brought the company together Mr. Dickens spoke as follows:-]

I must now solicit your attention for a few minutes to the cause of your assembling together — the main and real
object of this evening’s gathering; for I suppose we are all agreed that the motto of these tables is not “Let us eat
and drink, for to-morrow we die;” but, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we live.” It is because a great and good
work is to live to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to live a greater and better life with every succeeding
to-morrow, that we eat and drink here at all. Conspicuous on the card of admission to this dinner is the word
“Schools.” This set me thinking this morning what are the sorts of schools that I don’t like. I found them on
consideration, to be rather numerous. I don’t like to begin with, and to begin as charity does at home — I don’t like
the sort of school to which I once went myself — the respected proprietor of which was by far the most ignorant man I
have ever had the pleasure to know; one of the worst-tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was to
make as much out of us and put as little into us as possible, and who sold us at a figure which I remember we used to
delight to estimate, as amounting to exactly 2 pounds 4s. 6d. per head. I don’t like that sort of school, because I
don’t see what business the master had to be at the top of it instead of the bottom, and because I never could
understand the wholesomeness of the moral preached by the abject appearance and degraded condition of the teachers who
plainly said to us by their looks every day of their lives, “Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things
be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and
by our extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or
black turned snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it
is so very long since they were undarned and new.” I do not like that sort of school, because I have never yet lost my
ancient suspicion touching that curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always got the prizes. In
fact, and short, I do not like that sort of school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether. Again,
ladies and gentlemen, I don’t like that sort of school — a ladies’ school — with which the other school used to dance
on Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now, seem to me always to have been in new stays and
disgrace — the latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east —
and where memory always depicts the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever standing against a wall, in a
curious machine of wood, which confined her innocent feet in the first dancing position, while those arms, which should
have encircled my jacket, those precious arms, I say, were pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture called a
backboard, fixed in the manner of a double direction post. Again, I don’t like that sort of school, of which we have a
notable example in Kent, which was established ages ago by worthy scholars and good men long deceased, whose munificent
endowments have been monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in their distorted condition, are
struggled for and fought over with the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don’t like that sort of school — and I have
seen a great many such in these latter times — where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and where
those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the wisest among us to remember in after life — when the
world is too much with us, early and late 22 — are gloomily and grimly scared
out of countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and
small calculating machines. Again, I don’t by any means like schools in leather breeches, and with mortified straw
baskets for bonnets, which file along the streets in long melancholy rows under the escort of that surprising British
monster — a beadle, whose system of instruction, I am afraid, too often presents that happy union of sound with sense,
of which a very remarkable instance is given in a grave report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect that a
boy in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his slate, as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing
prohibition, “Thou shalt not commit doldrum.” Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I don’t like those schools,
even though the instruction given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard
speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there.
Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine from
year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad even to be glanced at in this cheerful
assembly.

22 An allusion to a well-known Sonnet of Wordsworth, beginning
— “The world is too much with us — late and soon,” &c. — ED.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will permit me to sketch in a few words the sort of school that I do
like. It is a school established by the members of an industrious and useful order, which supplies the comforts and
graces of life at every familiar turning in the road of our existence; it is a school established by them for the
Orphan and Necessitous Children of their own brethren and sisterhood; it is a place giving an education worthy of them
— an education by them invented, by them conducted, by them watched over; it is a place of education where, while the
beautiful history of the Christian religion is daily taught, and while the life of that Divine Teacher who Himself took
little children on His knees is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will nor narrow human dogma is permitted to darken the
face of the clear heaven which they disclose. It is a children’s school, which is at the same time no less a children’s
home, a home not to be confided to the care of cold or ignorant strangers, nor, by the nature of its foundation, in the
course of ages to pass into hands that have as much natural right to deal with it as with the peaks of the highest
mountains or with the depths of the sea, but to be from generation to generation administered by men living in
precisely such homes as those poor children have lost; by men always bent upon making that replacement, such a home as
their own dear children might find a happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away. And I fearlessly ask
you, is this a design which has any claim to your sympathy? Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your
support?

This is the design, this is the school, whose strong and simple claim I have to lay before you to-night. I must
particularly entreat you not to suppose that my fancy and unfortunate habit of fiction has anything to do with the
picture I have just presented to you. It is sober matter of fact. The Warehousemen and Clerks’ Schools, established for
the maintaining, clothing, and educating of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those employed in the wholesale
trades and manufactures of the United Kingdom, are, in fact, what I have just described. These schools for both sexes
were originated only four years ago. In the first six weeks of the undertaking the young men of themselves and quite
unaided, subscribed the large sum of 3,000 pounds. The schools have been opened only three years, they have now on
their foundation thirty- nine children, and in a few days they will have six more, making a total of forty-five. They
have been most munificently assisted by the heads of great mercantile houses, numerously represented, I am happy to
say, around me, and they have a funded capital of almost 14,000 pounds. This is wonderful progress, but the aim must
still be upwards, the motto always “Excelsior.” You do not need to be told that five-and-forty children can form but a
very small proportion of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those who have been entrusted with the wholesale trades
and manufactures of the United Kingdom: you do not require to be informed that the house at New-cross, rented for a
small term of years, in which the schools are at present established, can afford but most imperfect accommodation for
such a breadth of design. To carry this good work through the two remaining degrees of better and best there must be
more work, more co-operation, more friends, more money. Then be the friends and give the money. Before I conclude,
there is one other feature in these schools which I would commend to your special attention and approval. Their
benefits are reserved for the children of subscribers; that is to say, it is an essential principle of the institution
that it must help those whose parents have helped them, and that the unfortunate children whose father has been so lax,
or so criminal, as to withhold a subscription so exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts to only
threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out and shoulder away the happier children, whose father
has had that little forethought, or done that little kindness which was requisite to secure for them the benefits of
the institution. I really cannot believe that there will long be any such defaulting parents. I cannot believe that any
of the intelligent young men who are engaged in the wholesale houses will long neglect this obvious, this easy duty. If
they suppose that the objects of their love, born or unborn, will never want the benefits of the charity, that may be a
fatal and blind mistake — it can never be an excuse, for, supposing them to be right in their anticipation, they should
do what is asked for the sake of their friends and comrades around them, assured that they will be the happier and the
better for the deed.

Ladies and gentlemen, this little “labour of love” of mine is now done. I most heartily wish that I could charm you
now not to see me, not to think of me, not to hear me — I most heartily wish that I could make you see in my stead the
multitude of innocent and bereaved children who are looking towards these schools, and entreating with uplifted hands
to be let in. A very famous advocate once said, in speaking of his fears of failure when he had first to speak in
court, being very poor, that he felt his little children tugging at his skirts, and that recovered him. Will you think
of the number of little children who are tugging at my skirts, when I ask you, in their names, on their behalf, and in
their little persons, and in no strength of my own, to encourage and assist this work?

At a later period of the evening Mr. Dickens proposed the health of the President of the Institution, Lord John
Russell. He said he should do nothing so superfluous and so unnecessary as to descant upon his lordship’s many
faithful, long, and great public services, upon the honour and integrity with which he had pursued his straightforward
public course through every difficulty, or upon the manly, gallant, and courageous character, which rendered him
certain, in the eyes alike of friends and opponents, to rise with every rising occasion, and which, like the seal of
Solomon, in the old Arabian story, enclosed in a not very large casket the soul of a giant. In answer to loud cheers,
he said he had felt perfectly certain, that that would be the response for in no English assembly that he had ever seen
was it necessary to do more than mention the name of Lord John Russell to ensure a manifestation of personal respect
and grateful remembrance.